The Importance of Lungwort

(Moss and lichen, but not Lungwort)

I woke up this morning to the sound of voices in the house. Not unusual, since my husband gets up early and likes to watch the news. I find it unsettling, the sound of strange voices, and whatever dream I am having just before waking up usually takes a strange turn as I drift from dreamland to somewhat awake. This morning, I was unprepared for the tornado of emotion that struck, when he came into the bedroom and asked, “Do you know Meadowdale Beach Park?” His perfectly innocent question took me on a ride of memories and emotions that left my mind reeling, and me weeping. Fortunately, he had already left the room…

He asked the question because there was a story on the news about a tree falling on a girl in that park. A short blurb about a tragedy that had just changed the course of many lives. Meadowdale Beach Park is at the end of the street where I grew up in Edmonds, but is a much different place now than when I lived there. It is located in one of the countless mossy, tree filled drainage-creek ravines that line the shores of Puget Sound. It was known as Lund’s Gulch, named after the homesteader in the 1870’s. The upper slopes were a nearly impenetrable tangle of temperate rain forest, and the lower slopes widened out to an open alluvial plain that had turned into a meadow, which would have blended seamlessly into the beach, if not for the railroad tracks passing between. It was not a “park” when I lived there, but the lower end of it had been developed into a private park and country club, before I was born. There was a clubhouse, an outdoor Olympic size pool, and open lawns for play. I have a very vague recollection of attending a birthday party there as a young child, and attending Garden Club meetings with my mother. The community club was closed in the late 1960’s, and the property fell into disrepair. When I was eight years old, there was a fire, and the already ravaged and vandalized clubhouse was burned to the ground. The park remained deserted and in ruins for the remainder of my childhood.

I was an explorer from a very early age, and my ramblings frequently took me to the park. The property was closed to the public in 1970, but that never stopped me. It had an eerie, haunted feel, like a ghost town version of a Gidget-era country club. The pool foundation was broken and was full of dirty water, and someone had pushed a car into it, where it lay rusted and partially submerged. The foundation of the clubhouse lingered, charred and moss-covered. The meadow was overgrown, and an enormous weeping willow had outgrown its intended landscape bounds, like a giant plant from a dinosaur movie, its fronds tickling the surface of the algae filled pool. I would walk the short distance from home, and always stop at the end of the road, where there was a short trail out to the bluff high above the train tracks, that overlooked the beach and the park. I used to sit there, surveying the entire area, feeling like an Indian scout on the lookout. When all seemed clear, I would head down the hill into the park. There was still a road that meandered down, ran along the base of the bluff, and out toward the beach. I spent a great amount of time exploring the area. I used to take a jar, and would catch polliwogs from the old swimming pool to take home to raise into frogs. (The capture was successful, the rearing of the frogs, not so much.) Once, I was walking along the old road, and came face to face with an enormous stag, with an impressive set of antlers. We stood staring at each other for a long moment, and then he bounded up the steep cliff like it was nothing. There was a gorgeous creek, as beautiful as any mountain stream, that one day became a raging torrent after a storm, and swept away the remnants of the clubhouse and filled the pool with debris. I can remember the awesome sight, as I came down the hill and turned the corner, of the muddy torrent that changed the course of the stream and wiped away the evidence that anything man-made had ever existed. It was like the earth had erupted and spewed forth a giant geyser of chocolate milk. Of course, I kept on going, hopping logs to get across the river, and charting the new terrain with interest. (Side note here to my parents: What the hell were you thinking, all those days you let me out to wander alone?)

When I was in 9th grade, I took biology. It was a class that would change my way of thinking, and had I paid better attention later on, would have changed the course of my life. One day, Mr. Usitalo, our teacher, was talking about Lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria). I don’t remember the entire presentation, and whether the subject at hand was asexual reproduction or plants with medicinal uses, but as he described the environment in which it thrived, I knew immediately where it could be found. He challenged us to find a sample, and anyone who did so would receive fifty extra credit points. I already had an A in that class, but being an overachiever and of the fiercely competitive sort, I was determined to find it. I enlisted the aid of my grandmother, who lived up the street, and was a (uncredentialed) master gardener and always game for adventure. We donned our mud boots and set forth to hunt and seek. We headed to the park, crossed the stream, and bushwacked our way up the ravine in search of the elusive lichen. We ventured much further than I had ever been alone. We collected a sample, and I proudly presented it to the teacher the following Monday. He decreed it close, but not Lungwort. I was the only student who had tried, and I was rewarded twenty-five extra credit points for my effort. I considered the extra credit a win, but the memory of that day spent with my grandmother, exploring my favorite place, was the true prize.

After college, I moved to California for a few years, and my family moved away from my childhood home. The gulch property was turned into an official park. I visited the official park for the first time last Spring, and it was with very mixed emotions. The old road that I used to walk is now a service entrance only, and to enter the park, you have to drive several miles away, and park at the top of the ravine. There is an official parking lot, signboards, an official trail. It winds down the steep hill, crossing the same muddy patches of skunk cabbage, skirting the same creek, hugging the same slippery slope that I climbed across, 40 years ago, with my grandmother gleefully leading the way. This had been my private place, my bluff lookout, my forest, my stream, my beach and meadow and memories. I joined the parade of people heading down the path to the beach, lost in my memories, the way I used to intentionally get lost in the woods. In the meadow, near where the clubhouse used to be, stands an idyllic little house for the park Ranger, which I immediately coveted. The lower meadow looks much the same, and the cement culvert that goes under the railroad tracks and guides the stream out to the Sound is exactly the same. Walking through that tunnel and trying to stay on the narrow ledge, with the echo of the stream running alongside my feet, I was transported back to my childhood.

The news this morning that a 17-year-old girl was crushed and killed by a falling tree in my childhood haven brought a rush of emotion that caught me completely off guard. I was overcome with sorrow and grief for her family, and for her companions who had made futile attempts to lift a seventy-five foot Douglas fir off their friend. They are all forever changed. I thought about all the ways I could have died there myself: Falling trees, raging floods, mudslides, sliding off the bluff to the rocks and tracks below, being hit by a train, drowning in a deserted pool filled with polliwogs, or my leg slipping off a log and trapping me in the river, the run-in with a child predator, the inadvertent startling of a buck three times my size, the possibility of a mishap at an underage drinking party as a teenager. This was mixed in with the memory of my grandmother, whose death thirty-some years ago I have yet to recover from. The regret that I could not make the trip to Oregon this weekend to attend the funeral of my mother’s last cousin, one of my grandmother’s clan, was mixed in. As was the fact that I am preparing to say goodbye to the home I have raised my children in, and the areas that they have explored and considered their haven. I appreciate the full-circle aspect of life, and the way things all tie together, but sometimes, that full-circle thing knocks me for a loop.

When I think about Lund’s Gulch, now an official County park, I do not picture the parking lot and signs and trails with handrails. I do not picture the rotting remains of a defunct country club or a rusting car in a dank pool. I cannot let myself picture the tragedy of Friday afternoon. What I do picture is this: The view from the bluff, through the trees, as I sit on a bed of moss. The wonder at standing face to face with wildlife. The delight of catching polliwogs. The excitement of seeing salmon hatchlings in the stream. The thrill of standing transfixed, and watching a flood disgorge and reshape the landscape. The peace of sitting beside the small estuary at stream’s end, my toes in the sand, leaning against bleached driftwood. The smell and feel of the lush green forest and ferns and moss, filled with the sound of birds. And perhaps, best of all, the importance of Lungwort.